Thursday, December 31, 2009

This is my stairwell and my brother in law, Erik. He lives in Oslo. But since he is home for Christmas I just had to shoot some pictures of him in his brand new pair of Ravishing Mad Marv drop crotch jeans. You look gorgeous!!!

Sunday, December 20, 2009

It's snowing and snowing and snowing...We were supposed to do a small photo shoot today and had to postpone it because of the weather!!!! We simply couldn't get to the location. What an anti-climax! And on top of it all the production is delayed because of the bad weather in central Europe. The last thing I heard was that the denim garments couldn't reach the washing mill in Romania because of the snow chaos. What a mess! There is only one road between the mills and we are of course not the only company that this has happened to. They are very good at sending updates on the situation though, so at least I know what's happening.

So instead of getting to see some fantastic behind the set pics today, this is what you got! Nothing.

Friday, December 11, 2009

"Every Thursday, FADER style assistant Alex Frank asks employees and employers at our favorite shops around the world what their most cherished in-store item is at that exact moment. This week, we caught up with New York’s International Playground.

Johnny Pizzolato & Virginia Craddock, International Playground, New York. We normally go mad for all the sequins and shiny things in our shop, but our truly favorite thing in the shop at the moment are simple, but amazing Ravishing Mad Jeans. The high waist skinny jeans and the more loose fit Marv jeans are both unisexy, fresh and flattering. They feel like a fashion jean with Swedish influence without being too over the top. The designer Anna Osterlund, is beyond beautiful and wickedly charming, and the line itself is timeless, season-less and so Brit punk rock. Besides, the curved waistline on the skinny jean just makes you look, well, skinny." Read the article at FADER

Thursday, December 10, 2009

I collect words. I don’t know when it all begun, but I find myself thinking of them every now and then. How did you fancy the little word “humbug” that I throw in yesterday? It just sounds so funny, and it could make just anyone look up. Then there is the word “villain”. I just feel sorry for the crook that would ever be referred to as a villain. Straight out from a comic book. Poor thing, who would ever take him seriously or be as afraid of him as he would have wanted?

But then there are the really cruel ones like “conformity”. That’s scary, and even scarier is “the army of conformity”. Please don’t ever let me become their victim...! And there is more: “suppress the dissident”. Isn’t that what the army of conformity does? All those sssses makes it sound like it’s said by snake in Robin Hood.

I sometimes name the garments in my collections after those lovely words. I give them a personality and decide what their characters are up to. The big pocket villain is one of my favourites. She wears black pants disguised in the few lights of the night when everyone else is asleep. She sneaks around stealing whatever she can get and stuffs her big pockets into a jodphur silhouette.

"Marv", the nihilist hero, he actually is a person more than just a word. I dedicated a pair of jeans to this lead character of Frank Millers comic yarns about Sin City. Marv is personifying the film noir genre, a hard-boiled fighter with a heart of gold. I decided that he needed a pair of combat inspired jeans with built in knees and a loose crotch, not to interfere with his movements during fight. His silhouette had to be wicked to make him look cool enough. The ankle width was made slim to make it look like the jeans were tucked into his combat boots. Last but not least, the waistband was made higher on the sides just in case he would need a place to fasten his suspenders.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

I get thrilled every time somebody writes to me and tell me they just discovered Ravishing Mad. Really happy, dancing around, laughing out loud!!! And I'm not famous enough yet to get any negative comments, hehe...but yet I live under the constant worry that I'm not doing well enough or that I'll be seen through as a humbug. You know, I don't know what I'm doing...I'm just doing. A little here and a little there, let's make that crotch drop a bit more and let's add a bow tie.

If I would have measured my success in money, I would have had to quit long time ago so that's not fair. So how do I know if I'm on the right track???

I know it's a bit foney, but I check the statistics on my homepage VERY often, call it an obsession if you will. The amount of visitors has steadily been around a thousand every month and it's all good.

But then I raise my eyebrow...I must have a smaller crowd that follows me in Niue! I am totally excited but have no idea what that means!!! Niue is a 269 km² island nation in the South Pacific Ocean. Its three priority economic sectors are Fisheries, Agriculture and Tourism and listen to this: inhabitants: 1600 people. Niue stands for around 1 % of the visitors and I'm dying of curiosity! Who are you???

Ok, you can almost only see the waistband, but still...! This pic is from the Finnish magazine Basso and they got my jeans from International Playground in NYC.International Playground just opened a web shop filled with stuff from Ravishing Mad, Vibe Johansson, Wackerhaus, H. Fredriksson, Cut-it-out, and Chromat.

Ravishing Mad is the alias of Anna Österlund, Malmö based Swedish fashion designer, artist, painter, film maker and photographer, who works closely with artists alike.
Over the years, Ravishing Mad has become Anna's middle name more than just the fashion brand it once was. She now works cross-disciplinary photographing, making short films, exclusive fashion items and paintings, often in collaboration with musicians and other creatives.
Anna Österlund holds a bachelors degree in Arts,
major in fashion design and graduated from the Swedish School of Textiles in 2006. A year after graduating she launched the fashion brand Ravishing Mad, and was until early 2012 producing androgynous ready-to-wear collections and jeans at high quality factories around Europe, as well as conceptual hand-made one-offs in her studio in Malmö, Sweden. The collections were shown in Paris, New York, Berlin, Copenhagen and Stockholm and sold in major cities around the world.
She frequently runs workshops for schools companies in the subjects fashion, identity, branding and creativity, in a non-afraid approach to working fast and using DIY methods and guerilla marketing.